[Camille Benso, Count di Cavour, an illustrious Italian statesman; born at Turin, Aug. 10, 1810; elected to the Sardinian chamber of deputies, 1849, after having for years defended the cause of Italian independence by voice and pen; minister of commerce, 1850; of finance, 1851, prime minister, 1852; arranged with Napoleon III. the war against Austria, 1859, but resigned after the peace of Villa Franca; resumed office, 1860, and was the first prime minister of the kingdom of Italy; died June 6, 1861.]

In a letter to the Marchese Barollo, Oct. 2, 1832, when Italian independence was but a dream, he showed what was the ruling thought of his life. The cause to which he devoted himself was the constitutional unity of his country, the entire peninsula. Italy, he said, must be made by liberty, or I despair of making her at all. He explained the condition of things following the defeat of Novara, and the abdication of Charles Albert, in 1849, by the simple statement, We existed, and every days existence was a gain.

He silenced a deputy who laughed while he was praising English institutions in the Sardinian Parliament, by suggesting that the laugh could only proceed from some one whose name has never reached England.

His recipe against being ennuyé was effective: I persuade myself that no one is tiresome.

In politics, he declared, nothing is so absurd as rancor.

Cavour was never married. He parried the jokes of the king on the subject of his celibacy by an allusion to the nobler devotion of his life: Italy is my wife: I will never have another.

In his last illness; referring to government by armed force, when the laws are for the time being suspended.

In a speech after the annexation of Naples by Garibaldi in 1860, he made the important announcement which will be forever associated with the name of Cavour: We are ready to proclaim in Italy this principle, A free church in a free state. They were also his last words, to the priest in attendance upon him: Frate, frate, libera chiesa in libero stato. Montalembert wrote in the preface to his own works, published in Paris in 1860: In a word, the free church in a free state has been the programme which led me to my first efforts, and which I continue to regard as just and true, reasonable and practical, after the studies and struggles of thirty years.